Former Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, has said the failure to give legal backing to Nigeria’s whistleblower policy led to the decline of one of the country’s most successful anti-corruption initiatives.
Speaking at the second edition of the Citadel School of Government Dialogue series in Lagos on Saturday, Adeosun described the policy as a powerful tool that lacked the statutory protection needed for sustainability.
The whistleblower policy, introduced in December 2016, enabled the recovery of large sums of looted funds, including the widely publicised $43 million found in an Ikoyi apartment. However, Adeosun said the initiative’s biggest weakness was that it was not institutionalised through legislation.
“My biggest regret is the Whistleblower Policy. It was highly successful, leading to the discovery of the $43 million in the Ikoyi apartment but I didn’t turn it into a law,” she said. “Because it was only a policy, it was easily tossed aside when leadership changed. If you want a reform to last, you must institutionalise it through law.”
She stressed that reforms without legal backing often lose momentum in Nigeria’s bureaucratic system, adding that durable policies must be embedded in strong institutions.
Adeosun also highlighted efforts during her tenure to eliminate “ghost workers” from the federal payroll using the Bank Verification Number (BVN) system. She said about 45,000 irregular entries were identified, with some individuals linked to multiple salaries.
“The payroll was our biggest cost… We found 45,000 ‘ghost workers.’ In many cases, it wasn’t a ‘ghost,’ but one person’s BVN linked to seven different salaries,” she explained.
The dialogue, chaired by Tunde Bakare of the Citadel Global Community Church, examined the challenges of implementing reforms in resistant political environments.
Also speaking, Mike Adebamowo of the University of Lagos Business School noted that resistance often accompanies transformational leadership.
Adeosun urged future leaders to combine firmness with empathy, describing the ideal reformer as a “compassionate bulldozer” who pushes necessary changes while engaging the public.
She concluded that Nigeria’s anti-corruption success depends on building strong institutions capable of outlasting political transitions.
